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I know there are a lot of aikido videos on youtube......some are great, some ok, some terrible, and some that don't resemble aikido at all. Just out of curiosity, overall do you think sites like youtube are beneficial for aikido training. Although there are some great video clips I am concerned about newbies who may not really know much about what they are watching yet.

Newbies won't be newbies forever. They will learn just as we did, how to decide what they like and don't like in Aikido.

Youtube is a wonderful source for Aikido information. You have the opportunity to see many styles and approaches you would not otherwise have available to you. More information is always better...well unless you want to control what everyone thinks.

Why bring in the newbies? I've been training 13 years and I'm still not sure what I'm watching sometimes, particularly when Endo sensei is teaching. The great thing though is that no matter how misled you may or not be by a video, at the end of the day, you still have to bring it back on the mat and see if it works. Or not.

I'm a newbie, and YouTube has been a great help to me. Newbies can benefit in many ways, without swallowing everything we see hook, line, and sinker. Here's what I've done:
- Learn who respected sensei are, and watch videos of them.
- Look for contributors who consistently post things that agree with what you hear and see at your own dojo, and pay attention to their videos.
- Read the comments (a lot of which are just stupid) for those nuggets of information, questions, or feedback that actually make sense.
- Form questions/hypotheses about what you see on YouTube (like "Hmmm... I never noticed sensei's feet moving that way"), and then watch at your own dojo to see how it's really done.
- Watch videos of instructors who will be visiting your dojo or doing seminars in your area, to help mentally prepare for their style of speaking or teaching.
- I know newbies can't know which way is right/wrong, but even someone with no Aikido experience at all can see who seems centered, poised, integrated, graceful, balanced, gentle, powerful, etc. A video of Patrick Cassidy Sensei caught my eye before I had any idea who he was. There's also a guy who goes by the user name LordOsaya who has documented his journey from newbie onward. I couldn't tell you if he's doing everything correctly, but his composure, grace, and posture during tests are sight to behold (and the music he chooses is brilliant). Pay attention to those people, and watch the others (forceful, rough, sloppy, etc.) with an eye toward "how not to do it."
- Create playlists for Techniques, Ukemi, My Dojo, Guest Instructors, or whatever, do you have a collection of good videos to refer to. You can find my playlists here: http://www.youtube.com/user/LindaEskin
- Some of the very basic, slow, "how to" videos, assuming you can see that they are in the same style you are learning, are a great help when you're trying to figure out which foot goes where, and what were your hands supposed to be doing, again?

Good posts. I agree that is it useful and I know I spend too much time watching videos myself. There are not to many seminars in my area and with active school age kids I don't get the chance to travel to learn from other instructors at this time so seeing others on youtube has been helpful.

I have found u-tube extremely helpful. Always look for a video of the previous class's techniques so I can mentally review and recall what it looks like. Created a play list of the techniques on my upcoming test so I can work on linking technique names to their movements. And one very generous utube member created some videos just for me on Ukemi for the larger person.

As with anything it is important to use good judgment and common sense. And at the end of the day it is what goes on in your own dojo that matters most.

I agree, YouTube can be a very useful source for Aikido practitioners.
I've been off the mat for a number of years and was apprehensive about coming back, primarily due to a lack of confidence in my ukemi abilities.

Watching YouTube made me realise I didn't really have anything to worry about, and went back to my first class in 10 years yesterday.

Ukemi was like riding a bike, you never forget - Unfortunatley I'm aching in places I didn't think could ache today!

Watching youtube videos has helped me a lot as a major newbie. I mean, honestly the concept of spirals and circles were a bit difficult for me to understand right away, and I still don't fully understand them but I watched some videos of Christian Tissier and that has certainly helped lol.

Information yearns to be free. If youtube did not exist or was not used, someone would just create it and then the information would naturally begin to flow. Youtube provides extra value in that, unlike Aikiweb and other moderated venues, it is uncensored in the context of Aikido (it is very censored in other contexts) and information which is censored or otherwise damaged can be re-routed through those more open channels.

Like anything, it is a double edged sword. There is good and bad from it. I believe it is a great resource that should be used. Like anything on the internet, you have to be able to wade through the crap to get to the good stuff though. I know I have looked at my kyu syllabus and went "I don't remember learning that..." and youtube it only to find out "Yeah... I remember that now!" or look at it and go "Nope. Never seen that before." I even looked up how to fold a hakama on there. The folding part is easy, but I was a bit confused on the tying of the himo till I watched it. Once I watched it, I haven't had a problem since.

~Look into the eyes of your opponent & steal his spirit.
~To be a good martial artist is to be good thief; if you want my knowledge, you must take it from me.

YouTube is terrible. Why would anyone buy a professionally produced DVD if they can just get stuff for free from YouTube? Eventually someone will rip the DVD content and post it to YouTube anyway.

DVDs are a great way for a dojo to make some extra cash.

Besides the quality of the video (not the content but the picture size, resolution , color clarity, etc) is typically so poor on YouTube it subtracts a great deal from the content.

For the teachers who really matter, I think the serious student will spend the cash to get the DVD. For instance, clips from Endo's DVDs are on Youtube, but I have bought all his DVDs anyway. Now waiting for the next one.

I think youtube aikido videos are great. I'd never have the patience to watch a Tissier DVD (but I go to his seminars and have some of his books), but having a 5 minute clip on, for example, tsuki irimi nage is very nice, especially when watching them at work between two tasks.

The great think is the search function. You want to know how to do ushiro otoshi ukemi? Youtube offers a tutorial. I still cannot do it and didn't expect to learn it just watching a video...but at least I know how it looks when someone can do it

Maybe it's not so great for details, but then - there are classes where you can learn the details,

As Asai Sensei from Germany said to us at our summer seminar. "This is how I do the techniques and in my seminars do them my way" ( I am paraphrasing a bit). " When you practice with your sensei you should do them his way."

I think Youtube is a great resource but it can cause confusion on the mat when students bring a youtube "style" to the dojo.
As well I believe it causes difficulty for newer students in learning basic techniques (kihon) and doing ukemi.

I don't think there's much cause for concern, because I don't think there are many people at all who watch youtube videos and try to learn aikido from them.

I have received so many requests to post YouTubes that we now have a YouTubes link on our website. YouTube, amongst other social outlets and "FREE" information sites, is quickly becoming the dominant information source for younger generations. The speed at which users can disseminate information through these mediums is dizzying. Of course, the information need not be factual, nor qualified... I am going to try to publish links to aikido clips which I have reviewed to reduce the opportunity for students to see "bad" clips.

i think YouTube (or its conterparts) will present two direct problems for aikido:
1. Who will be responsible to review and authorize the quality of the clips "representative" of aikido? There are great clips on YouTube; there are also terrible clips.
2. The "FREE" drive is part of a larger assault on the commodity of aikido. Why buy a DVD of instruction when I can watch YouTube videos? Why attend seminars when I can watch YouTube videos? Why pay for class when I can watch YouTube videos?

Many students benefit from watching YouTube clips of aikido, but there is cost to that convenience. As a free resource, users must discern between the good clips and the bad. As I saw posted earlier, even for advanced students, many aikido video clips look unreal - how do we expect new or prospective students to digest what is good [and bad] aikido? We can't.

Currently there is a Playstation 3 commercial which utilizes Internet-based knowledge in a humorous commerical for the $299 PS3. The ad leads with a younger male asking a Playstation representative, "I read on the Internet the PS3 is $299." The representative, walking through a series of "$299" ad materials (banners, signs, etc.) says, "you can't believe everything you read on the Internet, that's how World War I was started..." Even advertisers are picking up on the [over]reliance on Internet information by younger people.

The sharing of information in regard to as fragile a meme as aikido can only be good.

Obscurity, rather than questionable quality, is what hurts many martial arts (if the goal is for the art to survive).

I think Lyle is correct. There are some styles of Aikido that are severely lacking by way of exposure and availability of information and media, video or otherwise. Sites such as Youtube present a small sampling of what is actually happening in dojos with all levels of instructors globally and may make available things that one may never become exposed to unless one were to travel to Japan or if one were to wait for their instructor to bring out a DVD.

As far as questionable quality goes, well it depends on what one qualifies as quality - across the multitude of Aikido styles there is no common measure of quality so there will always be misjudgments in that regard. Most people only know what looks good imho.

As far as decreased DVD sales go I don't see Youtube being as big a problem as peer to peer file sharing actually. When I can get just the video on Youtube I can get the entire original DVD via a torrent - there is no comparison really. If one is serious about ones training and supporting ones style or instructors then one buys the DVD imho.

Like anything else its utility and benefit has a lot to do with the person using it. There are obvious limitations placed on human intelligence, but none whatsoever on our stupidity.

YouTube is terrible. Why would anyone buy a professionally produced DVD if they can just get stuff for free from YouTube? Eventually someone will rip the DVD content and post it to YouTube anyway.

I watch a lot of videos on YouTube (see my post from earlier in the discussion), and buy lots of videos (Ledyard, Amdur, Aikido Bridge Seminar...). Some teachers/schools post videos as a very effective way to promote their own videos or dojos.

Post seminar videos are very good, I think for helping you remember recall the mechanics of what you were doing that you might forget. They are very helpful for understanding gross movements/patterns...not so helpful for the small "feel" or internal stuff that goes along with it.